We’ve been interested in having an EV rather than a petrol-powered car for a while now but we figured that it would be a while until the prices came down. I hadn’t driven one myself until recently, but I was a passenger in my brother’s EV about a year ago and it was impossible not to be impressed by how quiet it was and how eye-wateringly fast the acceleration was.
After my friend Shannon bought a hybrid, we thought about EVs again. The news that both MG and GWM has models for less than $40,000 helped. So we went and test drove the GWM Ora here in Geelong. It was fun to drive. Really zippy and features out the wazoo.
Like many families, we have had two cars, but they are rarely both in use and it’s almost never unavoidable. So we traded both of the cars in and, for less than $20,000 got ourselves a brand new, red Ora. It is sold in some markets as the Funky Cat and it does have gorgeous and playful lines.
Part of the calculous is that we don’t have to pay registration and insurance for two cars and that’s money saved right there. The new car also comes with 5 years of fixed-price servicing, at only $99 each time. Finally, it is just cheap to run.
Our Kia Sportage cost about $70 to fill and the Mitsubishi Mirage was about $35. Each of them did about 500 km on a full tank, and the new Ora says that it does 400 km, but realistically it is slow to charge to 100% charged.
I charged it the other day from about 20% to 80%, and it soaked up 37.44kWh
- If we charged it at home off the solar power only (which would be easy to do on a sunny day), it would have cost us $1.80 in lost earnings from what we would use instead of uploading to the grid.
- If we charged at home on off-peak power, that would have cost $8.23
- If we charged at home with peak-priced power, that would have cost $12
- If we used the fast charger over in Waurn Ponds, it would have cost $16.84.
- This would have been the fastest option, of course.
- And using the charger at the community centre 800 metres away, it was free.
So, whichever way we charge it, it is much cheaper than putting petrol into it.
It is slower than filling the car with petrol, but we would almost never do more than 300km in a day so charging it overnight would be cheap ($12) and entirely manageable. And, if push comes to shove, we could change it on the road and perhaps pay $16.
So, as you can probably guess, I am very happy with our new car.
I’m really enjoying my plug-in hybrid. I haven’t done nearly the calculating that you’ve done, but after having it 3 weeks now, the fact that it is still registering a completely full fuel tank is delightful. All of my day-to-day driving is fully electric. 🙂
Whilst EVs are fun and low costs, think about how much damage is done to the earth producing a battery for it.
Using more public transport cuts the chase for me until hydrogen cars are becoming more affordable 😉
From what I understand, they have about the same impact as a pertol powered car over an eight year period. So, I agree that they bad for the environment in the same way. And really solid public transport would absolutely be better.